The Damage Done

by P J Parrish

  The Dumpster Hookers.

  CMU Death Ring.

  Palmer Park Wolf Pack Murders.

  The Bay City Black Widow.

  The Boys in the Box.

  For a second, he just stared at the photos. But then the pieces came together and it hit him hard, like a fist to the chest.

  Cam had chosen the hookers. His dead mother was a hooker. Emily was stuck with the CMU students’ suicide pact. Palmer Park involved gay bashing. Louis didn’t know if Tooki was gay, but he was pretty sure a nerdy guy like him had experienced his share of bullying.

  And Junia? He didn’t know much about her, except that she wore expensive clothes and her immigrant father was a self-made millionaire.

  But he knew Steele.

  Knew first-hand how mercurial, even how cruel Steele could be. Seven years ago, after the sniper case in Loon Lake, a furious Steele, looking to blame someone for the crash-and-burn of the state’s intervention, had used his high position in the state police to destroy Louis’s career—and almost his life—in Michigan.

  Louis stared at the photograph of the small skeletons. The Boys in the Box. An ice-cold case of child abuse, there to be selected by an investigator with his own raw boyhood scars.

  Louis closed his fist, his heart quickening.

  It wasn’t just the idea that they each had gravitated toward cases that interested them. That happened all the time. This . . . this was orchestrated, like some grand scheme. Five hand-picked but damaged investigators matched with five specific unsolved cases.

  But why the hell would Steele concoct such a scenario? Was it a test of their emotional stamina? A drama to be played out for Steele’s private amusement? An arrogant game of mind fuck?

  “Louis.”

  The voice came from above. Louis stepped out from behind the bulletin board and looked up to see Steele leaning over the loft’s railing. Louis knew Steele couldn’t see the back of the bulletin board from above, but he had to know Louis had been looking at it.

  Louis cleared his throat. “Yes, sir?”

  “You driving down to Detroit soon?” Steele asked.

  “Heading out in a few minutes.”

  “Good.”

  Steele disappeared back into the dusk of the loft. Louis went back to his desk to get his briefcase and jacket. As he neared Emily he considered telling her about his theory about the cold cases, but decided not to. He wasn’t sure exactly what Steele was trying to do or what he hoped to gain. And he didn’t know if he should burden Emily with this shit about Steele until she found her footing with her medication. He couldn’t share with Cam, either. Playing games with mothers—especially murdered ones—was not something Cam would take well.

  Who could he tell? Who could help him figure out what do?

  He stared at the phone on his desk. With a glance back at Emily, he picked up the receiver and dialed the sheriff’s office in Echo Bay. He was surprised when Joe herself answered.

  “Hi,” he said quietly.

  Her voice lifted with surprise. “Well, hello stranger.”

  “Listen,” he said. “I need to see you. Is there any way you can come down for a few days?”

  “I thought you were coming up on your first days off?” Joe asked.

  “So far, Steele’s not offered any days off and it looks like we’ll be working straight through until something breaks.”

  Joe laughed softly. “Welcome back to the real world.”

  Louis leaned on his desk and closed his eyes. He had told her dozens of times that he loved her. But it was still hard to tell her he needed her, needed her to just listen.

  “Louis?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I have two meetings tonight and breakfast tomorrow with the mayor of Traverse City,” she said. “Maybe I can get away next week. How’s that?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  There was a long silence. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good,” he said. “I have to go. Goodbye, Joe.”

  He hung up and picked up his briefcase. He looked over at Emily. She was bent low over her desk, intent on reading something, but she was twisting a lock of her hair, a gesture he had seen her do often back in Florida when the horrors of the case they had worked together were heavy on her mind. He looked around the room, his eyes settling finally on Junia’s empty desk.

  He had no idea why she snapped so suddenly and walked away from a job others might kill for. And he would probably never know. But he did know one thing. He was not walking out like Junia had.

  Louis looked up at the choir loft.

  If this was a test, he would pass it.

  And if it was a game, he would win it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Louis had left Bushman’s office a message that he would stop by to get the PI surveillance report, and he had expected Bushman would either leave it for him with the security guard or not show at all, intending to hold out for a warrant.

  But Bushman was waiting for him in the lobby. He wore a purple John Lennon “Imagine No Religion” T-shirt and had an unlit cigarette stuck over one ear, a neon-green file folder in his hand. Except for a sleepy guard at the reception desk, the lobby was deserted, and it took Louis a moment to remember it was Saturday. Downtown Detroit had a way of emptying fast once the work week was over.

  “You’re late, detective,” Bushman said as Louis approached.

  “Five minutes,” Louis said. “Is that the file?”

  “Yeah,” Bushman said. “It’s all yours.”

  Louis held out his hand.

  “You could express some appreciation,” Bushman said.

  “For what?”

  “For me not making you guys jump through a shitload full of legal hoops to get this.”

  Louis wanted to grab the folder and hit the road. All the way down from Lansing, he’d thought about Steele and cracked jugs and the five cold cases on the bulletin board. He didn’t need any crap from this blowhard.

  “Just give me the file. It’s been a long morning.”

  Bushman thrust the neon green folder out. Louis snatched it and started to turn away.

  “You know,” Bushman called after him, “that kind of attitude is exactly why law-abiding folks in this city don’t like you guys. You cops are so full of yourselves you taste your own shit when you burp.”

  Louis stopped and drew a breath before he turned. He stepped back to Bushman. The radio jock’s face was florid in the streaky light and his breaths, heavy with cigarette smoke and phlegm, rasped softly in the quiet marble lobby.

  “Yeah, okay, thanks,” Louis said. “You saved me a lot of time. Good enough?”

  Bushman nodded. “I got something else for you.”

  “What?” Louis asked.

  “I got a strange phone call yesterday afternoon to my talk show,” Bushman said. “I believe you might be interested in it.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it might have to do with Jonas’s murder.”

  Now Bushman had his attention. “Okay. Talk.”

  “So, I’m on the air,” Bushman said. “It was an open mic show, where people call in and talk about whatever they want. Those shows attract a lot of weirdos. You wouldn’t believe the nut jobs I get. People think—"

  “Get to the point,” Louis said. “Please.”

  “Okay, okay,” Bushman said. “So, my screener takes a call and, like always, he asks her what she wants to talk about. She says she wants to ask me what happens to an atheist’s guilt.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well, you know how it goes,” Bushman said. “Christians commit sin and they ask Jesus for forgiveness and voilà, their conscience is clean. This woman wanted to know how do people who have no savior alleviate their guilt? Like, who do non-believers pawn our sins off on?”

  “All right, I get you. Go on.”

  “So, my screener says okay, sounds good, and he puts her on hold while we finish the calls before her,” Bushman said. “But when he goes back to
her and tells her she’s up next, she’s suddenly all freaked out, saying she can’t talk anymore. When he asks her why, she throws a damn Bible verse at him and hangs up.”

  “I’m still not seeing the connection,” Louis said.

  “Then let me finish, will you?” Bushman said. “So later, my screener mentions this to me and I get curious and look up the verse.” Bushman reached in his jeans pocket and pulled out a paper. “It was Psalm 146:3. Here, take a look.”

  Louis took the paper and turned it toward the light so he could read it. Bushman had printed it in bold black letters.

  Put not your trust in princes,

  nor in the son of man,

  in whom there is no help.

  “Did you get the phone number of the caller?” Louis asked.

  Bushman shook his head. “Only for the ones we put on the air. But my screener always asks people where they are calling from, and this woman said Grand Rapids. Now tell me you don’t think that’s kind of weird. Thirty-six hours after Jonas buys the farm, some woman from Grand Rapids calls me about princes and gets too freaked out to stay on the line?”

  Louis folded the paper. The prince reference was probably just a coincidence. And Bushman’s suspicions were colored not just by his animosity toward Anthony Prince, but also by his tin-hat conspiracy tendencies.

  “The verse might just mean she thinks there is no salvation out there, in man or God,” Louis said.

  “Then why not stay on the phone and talk about that?” Bushman asked. “I’m telling you, most of my callers are obsessed with spouting their opinions. They wait an hour or more to get on the air. They do not hang up.”

  Louis tucked the paper in the neon green folder. “Was there anything specific about her your screener noticed that might help identify her? Anything about her voice that stood out?”

  “No. I told you everything he remembered.”

  “Do you record your calls?” Louis asked.

  “Not the pre-screens. Just the ones that get on the air.”

  Louis nodded. The Beacon Light Cathedral had to have hundreds of female parishioners and employees who might suspect something but were afraid to come forward against such an influential family. Then there was Delia, Jonas’s housekeeper.

  And there was Violet Prince. But Louis couldn’t fully buy into the idea that a wife— especially one of such deep faith and devotion—would betray her husband by calling one of his most ferocious enemies and blurting out a Bible verse. If she had something substantial, why not just call the police?

  “Okay,” Louis said. “Thanks. This is probably nothing, but if she calls again, can you make sure you take her call?”

  “Already planned on that.”

  “And I would still appreciate it if you didn’t share this with anyone. Are we good on that?”

  Bushman thought for a moment, then he nodded. “Sure. I can do that.”

  Louis held out a hand. “Thank you.”

  Bushman slowly accepted the handshake, seemingly surprised Louis had offered it.

  “Just promise me that if Anthony Prince did this, you’ll find a way to nail that bastard,” Bushman said.

  Louis smiled as he turned away. “From your lips to God’s ears, Mr. Bushman.”

  Bushman called after him, his husky voice amplified by the cavernous marble walls. “I think you’re on your own with this one, detective.”

  Louis hurried down the steps and stepped outside, figuring Bushman was right. Homicide investigators were always on their own, even those who believed in the possibility of divine intervention. Because they all knew leads and clues didn’t fall from the sky. You had to hunt them down yourself.

  He looked down at the thin neon-green file. It looked like something a grade-schooler would carry around, and he was already thinking about what a lousy job that PI had probably done. How much could be learned from one week’s surveillance done two months ago that had given Bushman nothing better than gin martinis to fire at Anthony?

  Louis’s stomach rumbled with hunger and he turned, intending to head over to Layfette Coney Island. But his eye caught something—a glimpse of a giant, green statue across the street in front of a tall municipal building.

  For a few seconds, he just stared at it, struck with the feeling that he had seen it before, but he couldn’t place the time. It could have been any number of trips downtown as a child, just another Detroit landmark seen from the window of Phillip’s car on the way to a ball game. But he didn’t think so.

  Louis crossed the street and walked toward it. Behind the statue was the City-County Building, a concrete monolith of municipal offices, meeting rooms and courtrooms. He couldn’t remember ever being inside for any law enforcement purpose.

  But the statue . . .

  It was thirty feet high, a massive patina-green bronze that depicted a man in a loincloth who was sitting cross-legged, arms extended. In one hand he held a gold star-burst sun and, in the other, a small gold sculpture of a man, woman, and baby.

  Don’t climb on the statue, Louis. Get down from there.

  The voice was only a whisper, like a soft exhale from the past, but felt so real that Louis turned to see if someone had come behind him. But there was no one.

  There was a plaque at the statue’s base with the statue’s name—The Spirit of Detroit—and words from the sculptor:

  The artist expresses the concept that God, through the spirit of man, is manifested in the family,

  the noblest human relationship.

  Louis’s eyes swung up to the building. This was the place that housed the Department of Child Services. He had assumed his records were at the old Wayne County Building a few blocks away, but his foster care records had to be here.

  He looked again at the massive statue with its outstretched arms. Ironic that it celebrated both the family and the flawed system that too often and too quickly broke it up.

  His eyes swung to the dark front doors of the building. None of the offices would be open on a Saturday. No point in trying to get his file today.

  Thunder rolled in the distance, somewhere over Canada, and the sky was darkening, fog curling around the spire atop the Guardian Building. He hurried to the parking lot, intent on getting back on the road to Grand Rapids before the rain started. He’d take I-96 straight out of the city. It would be easy driving once he passed . . .

  Louis slowed, a map of the city forming in his head—a yellow splotch of color, carved up by that familiar pattern of roads that splayed out from the hub of the city like spokes on a wheel.

  He knew suddenly where he needed to go. He wasn’t sure of the exact address, but he knew once he got close he could find it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Grand River. That was the name of the street he was heading down now, but there was nothing grand about it. Four lanes of asphalt that spurted out from the heart of downtown Detroit like some great life-giving artery. But Grand River was lined with shuttered storefronts, weed-choked lots, drugstores with bars on the windows, and concrete-block taverns with no names above their doors.

  Louis had few memories of the time he had spent here as a foster kid. It had been for a few months and he had been just seven. What memories he did have weren’t good, and one came back to him now. It started with the smell of smoke, drifting in through an open window. Then he could see images flickering on an old TV set, images of orange flames. He didn’t really understand then what was going on just seven miles away, that Detroit was burning and black boys not much older than he was were rioting in the streets. All he knew then was it made him feel very frightened, because as hellish as his existence was inside the house on Strathmoor, at least he knew what to expect. But what was going on outside, the fires and screams and beatings in the streets, that made him feel like there was no place safe anywhere in the world.

  He turned left on Lyndon, looking for something familiar, anything to help him get his bearings. He passed an old brick building, Coyle Middle School, slowing when he spotted th
e athletic field. The baseball diamond was empty, but it triggered a memory—a boy’s high-pitched voice yelling “Loogy! Loogy!”

  Loogy . . . it meant something, he was sure. Maybe a nickname that someone called him? But nothing else was coming.

  He drove on and was about to give up when there it was—the street sign for Strathmoor. He hung a right into a neighborhood of small brick homes and old trees that sagged over the cracked asphalt. The odd juxtaposition of the homes was disconcerting—a boarded-up vacant hovel with the message GAS TURNED OFF spray-painted on the plywood, sandwiched between two well-kept houses with neat lawns and Hot Wheels laying in the driveway. He couldn’t remember the address, and he was seeing the house now with his kid-brain, as it had looked back then—an ugly red thing with a pitched roof that pierced the sky like a knife, and a strange positioning of a door and two windows that when seen at night had reminded him of a Halloween pumpkin.

  He pulled to a stop at the curb and leaned over to stare out the passenger window.

  This was it. Smaller, of course, because all the places you lived in as a kid were bigger in memory than in reality. It was more sad than evil in the gray light. But this was the place where he and Sammy had lived.

  There were no boards on the windows, but it didn’t look occupied. For one moment, he considered going into the backyard and finding a window to pry open. But sitting here in his state car, feeling the soft weight of his badge wallet in his jeans pocket, he knew he couldn’t do it. Things were different now. He was different now.

  He was about to pull away when he noticed the FOR SALE sign half-hidden in the high grass of the yard. He grabbed the cellular phone and dialed the realtor’s number.

  Four rings and the beginning of a message then a woman’s voice cut in. “Jane Talley, Coldwell Banker. How can I help you?”

  “Ah, yes. I’m sitting outside your house for sale on Strathmoor,” Louis said. “I’m very interested in seeing it.”

  A long pause and the sound of papers shuffling. “Strathmoor . . . yes, I have it right here. Well, it’s a three-two with a full basement and—”